


Hurrah for the Homeward Bound

by spuffyduds



Category: Hard Core Logo (1996), Life on Mars (UK)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-01-22
Updated: 2011-01-22
Packaged: 2017-10-14 23:48:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,281
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/154800
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spuffyduds/pseuds/spuffyduds
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sam Tyler walks into a bar and meets...Art Bergmann!</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hurrah for the Homeward Bound

**Author's Note:**

> This was done for the "intoabar" ficathon. I had absolutely no idea who Art Bergmann was when I got this prompt--it turns out that he is a real-life Canadian punk rocker who had a cameo as himself in Hard Core Logo. I was a bit daunted at first by the surprise!RPF, but it turned out to be fun--I got to study up on Bergmann a bit and hear some of his music. (Bound for Vegas--awesome punk song!)
> 
> This is set just after episode 4 of the first season of the UK Life on Mars. You need not be familiar with Art Bergmann, and this takes place decades before Hard Core Logo,but I'm not sure how much sense it would make if you were utterly unfamiliar with Life on Mars. And the RPF part is at the _highly_ AU end of RPF--for instance, I've no idea if Bergmann has ever been to England, and his real-life terrible guitar is probably not acoustic. Also, I didn't manage to get this going until too late for a Britpick, so I apologize in advance for anything that is jarringly NOT Manchester, 1973.
> 
> There is a vague reference to some canon noncon.
> 
> Disclaimer: I own none of the fictional characters and am utterly lying about the real one.

Sam’s taken two steps into the pub before the full horror of what he’s just heard hits him.

He spins on his heel and walks back out to gape at the scruffy kid--nineteen, twenty?--playing guitar and singing, empty hat on the ground in front of him. And yeah, it really _is_ "I Don't Believe in If Anymore." The kid wraps up the song with a cascade of chords that’s more like a car crash than a flourish, and glares at Sam. “ _What_?” he says.

“I’d guess you’re not a local,” Sam says. “Vancouver,” the kid says, looking like he expects that to start a fight.

“Word to the wise out-of-towner,” Sam says. “One, this is a copper pub. Bad choice for busking. Coppers don’t have much extra in their pay packet, and if they do, it’s going for another pint, not in your hat. Two, you’d better get out of here before the Guv has you in for murdering Roger Whittaker.”

“I meant it as a tribute to my host country,” the kid says, curling his upper lip, and launches into, good Christ, “Love Me Do.” But there’s a weird sort of...pained tilting slide to the sound of it, which, a verse or two in, Sam realizes is the result of the kid having to constantly retune _while he’s playing._ The guitar’s neck is visibly warped, and that combined with the tune Dopplering off the rails and back on again, over and over...Sam closes his eyes and fights a wave of nausea; it feels like he’s walked into an Escher painting with a matching soundtrack.

There’s a weird energy to it though, and the boy keeps bringing it back to _almost_ in tune, again and again, while he keeps playing, and the singing is--somehow he's managing to make “You know I love you, I’ll always be true” sound like he _means_ “I’ll come ‘round your house and stomp on your toys.”

He wraps up with another crash of strings untuning themselves, and Sam looks him up and down. Scrawny, unshaven, clothes look slept in.

Sam sighs. “You’ve not got a place to stay, do you?” he says. “And when did you eat last?”

“What day is it?”

“Right,” Sam says. “I’m Sam,” and he holds out a hand.

“Art,” the kid says, and shakes it, but he looks suspicious.

“C’mon in, I’ll buy you a dinner or three, give you a few quid for a room--there’s a youth hostel, not far.”

Art backs away, says, “Look, old man, I’m not--are you trying to--”

Sam closes his eyes, pinches the bridge of his nose, fights off the urge to respond to “old man” with “I had my fourth birthday a few weeks ago.”

“No,” he says, “I’m not trying to do anything. I just want--I’d just like--” and he has to stop and swallow for a moment because his voice has gone funny. He’s tired, is all. “I’d like to be able to _help_ someone with something. Anyone. With anything. I’d just like to do _one thing_ that actually turned out to help.”

Art blinks at him for a moment, then visibly relaxes and says, “Okay.”

Once they’re seated in a corner table Sam waves Nelson over, and Nelson gives Art an appraising look; when he brings the plates out later Sam’s is normal-sized and Art’s has about twice the usual amount of food on it, with a truly monumental mound of chips.

Art tucks into his dinner with gratifying gusto, and Sam smiles a little. Sam’s cocked up a legion of important things lately. But right now, this moment--this kid was hungry and now he’s not. That’s something.

Art's tucked his guitar carefully into the corner behind him, as if anyone would _want_ to steal it, and Sam waves a chip at it. “Where’d you _get_ that?” he says.

“Bought it off my brother.”

“With _money_?” Sam says, and Art glares at him and cuts up his fish.

“Even with that, though--you’ve got a gift,” Sam says. “Imagine what you could do if you didn’t have to keep tuning while you were playing.”

Art shrugs. “I’d probably get bored.”

Sam laughs and leans back in his chair, says, “I’m just sayin’, anyone who can make Roger Whittaker sound like the Sex Pistols unplugged has a future in punk.”

“Sex...plug...what?” Art says, tensing up again, and Sam shakes his head, says, “Never mind, I just mean, keep playing,” and signals Nelson for another round.

*********************************************  
By the time they’re on round four Art seems to have relaxed again, and he leans over near Sam’s ear--it’s loud in here now that the usual copper tables have filled up and everybody’s having to yell over the telly--and says, “What _happened_ to you, anyway? What was all that about needing to _help_ somebody?”

Sam considers, just for a moment, telling him. And then goes for the outright lie of the bare truth. “It’s been a pisser of a week,” he says, “I got to visit with my mum, and she was lovely and kind to me. And later I took a real looker of a girl home, and she cuffed me to my bed and fucked me.”

Art blinks at him. “That’s a _bad_ week?” he says. “You’re a hard man to please, Sam.”

“Lately, yeah,” Sam says. He looks over Art’s shoulder to where all the coppers have congregated around the dartboard. “You throw?”

They throw for a while, and keep drinking, and Sam is already drunk enough that he introduces Art around as a “wandering minstrel, with no money and a terrible guitar,’ and after a while everyone else is drunk enough that wagering happens. Art’s throwing with the old battered-and-bent bar darts but he beats Gene anyway, just barely.

Sam flashes Gene a quick smile because Gene could have won that throwing with his _feet_ , and Gene bares teeth back at him and grabs Art by his shirtfront, calls him a fucking hippie waste of breath and stuffs five quid in his shirt pocket.

Some blurry number of pints later Sam walks Art to the hostel, breathing in cool air and trying to get Art to talk about what the hell he’s doing here, what he’s looking for. (Or, what Sam thinks is more likely--considering he seems to have no more plans than he does money--what he’s running from.) Art hasn’t got much to say, though, just shrugs a lot and hums, halfway under his breath; even his quiet humming has a weird cragginess to it, the voice of someone much older and tireder.

When they get to the hostel Sam pays for a couple of nights, with a tip thrown in so they’ll watch out for Art a bit. “No playin’ that thing HERE,” the clerk says, grimly looking at the guitar on Art’s back, and Art shakes his head solemnly; the clerk sighs and walks off.

Art shakes Sam’s hand, says, “Thanks, man, you’re the first good thing that’s happened in a while,” and Sam can’t hold back any longer, says, “Go home.”

“What?”

“Have a good time first, enjoy yourself bumming around the world and being twenty, but then--whatever home is, if it’s your mum or your bandmates or whatever--go. While it’s still there.”

“Yeah, okay, old man,” Art says, and smiles at him.

"Right," Sam says, and walks off. He's turned a few corners before he notices that he's not headed for his lodgings, he's headed back to the pub full of coppers.

"Closest thing I've got, I guess," he says out loud to the empty street, and keeps walking.

\--end--


End file.
